Tour of the Murray River: Jones gets second win on stage 3

Race leader Brenton Jones (Avanti Racing) emphasised his dominance at the Tour of the Murray River with a well taken sprint victory over the BudgetForklifts duo of Alex Wohler and Jesse Kerrison in Quambatook. Jones extended his overall lead to nine seconds ahead of Kerrison and 18 seconds in front of Raphael Freinstein (CharterMason).

"Today was a special win, it was a hard win," said Jones. "There were a lot of challenging conditions out there with the weather and we were outnumbered in the breakaway with five BudgetForklifts and three Avanti riders, so to win the stage for the team shows that teamwork does win races. It's good to keep yellow too."

On another windy day that saw the peloton battling to stay together, Jones made his way into a 17 man group inside the first 20km of the 98km course held over narrow country Victorian roads. With the top three riders on GC all making it into the break, a drastic change in the overall classification appeared unlikely.

After a fast criterium held in the morning, the riders were feeling the pain of a windy day in the saddle but for Jones, the weather conditions weren't going to hinder his chances for victory.

"I don't mind the challenging cross-winds, but anything can happen [in the wind] and like we saw today, if you get caught out then you could lose minutes," said Jones of the stage.

In the final three kilometres, Wohler and Dylan Pierre-Humbert (Wormall Civil CSS) launched a late attack knowing that in a head-to-head sprint, Jones was likely to take line honours. The duo were caught in the final meters of the race as Jones rushed past to deny Wohler the win who just held of Kerrison for second.

"Coming into the finish Budget were throwing everything at us and my teammates Neil [van der Ploeg] and Scott [Law] did a hell of a lot of work to bring the moves back," Jones said of the finale,

"Neil actually had a bike change with four kilometres to go, so for him get back to the front and close that gap was amazing and made my job a lot easier.

"It was still a hard finish but for me, the harder the finish, the stronger I go."

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Video courtesy of Cycling Australia

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